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Through her Eyes

16 Feb — 25 May 2017 at the Elisa Contemporary Art in Riverdale, United States

17 February 2017

Through her Eyes, Exhibition view. Courtesy of Elisa Contemporary Art

Through her Eyes: A Southern California Perspective of our World opens February 16th at Riverdale NY Gallery

Elisa Contemporary Art is pleased to present "Through her Eyes: A Southern California Perspective of our World ". This two-woman show features two Southern California Abstract artists Kimber Berry and Stephanie Cate. It will open on February 16th and run through May 25th. Our artists interpret the universe in art – revealing their impressions of our environment on earth both naturally created and impacted by our human interactions, as well as our surrounding planets.

The exhibit will include two series by Kimber Berry - Liquid Landscapes and Plastic Gardens. Berry’s work represents the intersection of technology, nature and humanity. Her paintings are boldly colorful, in constant motion and multi-dimensional. She masterfully integrates cut and layered digital elements imposed on paper and vinyl with pure paint creating a dance between the virtual world and the organic universe.

According to Berry, the Liquid Landscapes “are an organic somewhat abstract ocean-like environment selected for its peaceful calming effect and because it helps in opening up the mind to other levels of being. Our lives are made up of constructed environments.” These worlds are created with a combination of digitally altered photographs of her paint strokes collaged in with her actual Acrylic paint.

In the Plastic Gardens series, Berry explores the human impact on our natural environment – how we relate to and manipulate nature. “How are we, as a society, going to create harmony and balance with the Earth? Is the creation of plastic gardens enough to offset the damage we're doing?.. I've constructed this series of paintings inspired by these plastic gardens. Plastic refers both to the materials I use, but also to the flexibility of these organic environments to exist and take any form the gardener wishes. Continuing my exploration of digital and paint, reality and illusion, new and old technology to take a closer look into the duality of societal expansion and growth. Using digitally manipulated photographs of paint, natural and plastic organic plants and flowers along side and embedded in actual paint, the highly manipulated surfaces of my paintings illustrate how highly manipulated nature has become. We need to ask ourselves what is our true relationship with nature?”

From emerging Los Angeles artist, Stephanie Cate, we’ll be traveling far into space…approximately 390 million miles…and more precisely to the planet Jupiter. The exhibit will feature the Europa series, both paintings on Wood Panel, and studies on paper. This series is based on the moon, Europa and Cate’s fascination with this planet, it’s structure and the potential for life.

Europa (Jupiter II) is the sixth-closest moon of Jupiter and the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after Europa, mother of King Minos of Crete. Europa - an icy moon of Jupiter - is slightly smaller than Earth's moon. It is unique in the solar system, being thought to have a global ocean of water in contact with a rocky seafloor. If the ocean is proven to exist, Europa could be a promising place to look for life beyond Earth.

Its surface is smooth and bright, consisting of water and ice criss-crossed by long, linear fractures. This texture and movement is boldly captured within Cate’s brushstrokes. Like Earth, Europa is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle and an ocean of salty water beneath its ice crust. If this ocean exists, the tides might also create volcanic or hydrothermal activity on the seafloor, supplying nutrients that could it suitable for living things.

Kimber is a Los Angeles artist, who is part of the "Flow Movement," a term coined by Art Critic (and curator)
Peter Frank. Her artwork is vibrant and dynamic mixed media combining acrylics, resins and digitally altered photographs of her paint-strokes. As a native of LA, Kimber loves to blur the line between what is real and what is illusion.

She has received a lot of positive attention from art critics and curators on the West Coast and has been featured in solo and group shows in New York, LA, Atlanta and London. She has been part of recent exhibits at the Riverside Museum and the Huntington Beach Art Center in California.

Her work is in public and private collections around the world. Kimber has been featured in Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, Ocean Home, Art Ltd, Luxe Interiors +Design, Flaunt, New York Times and CBS News.

She received her MBF from University of Southern California and MFA from Claremont Graduate University. In 2013, she created an installation at Terminal 3 at LAX. Kimber is also part of the Artists Pension Trust.

Stephanie Cate is an abstract painter based out of Los Angeles, California. She spent most of her childhood in France, before relocating to Los Angeles, California at fourteen. She spent a couple of years as an apprentice for a muralist in Santa Monica, painting large scale murals for casinos in Las Vegas and private residences before she decided to pursue her own artistic path. She attended Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, receiving a BFA in painting.

Being surrounded by the history and architecture of France as a child and the grand decaying beauty of former centuries left an early impression on her that still influences her work to this day. After working for over a decade in a photographic based mixed-media process, Stephanie returned to her original love of pure abstraction to delve in further and reconnect with freshness and liberation of texture, line, shape and color.